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Why Yoshinori Ono reimagined Street Fighter V

With Street Fighter V launching today, Capcom's premiere beat-'em-up series moves into a new era. Not only does it bring with it all the expected upgrades of a new entry -- unseen characters, new arenas, and an overall refinement of combat -- it also sets out to position itself as the definitive game in the series.

Whereas previous instalments have iterated over time -- Super Street Fighters, Ultra Street Fighters, and more -- Street Fighter V will last the console generation, updating the core game with additional fighters and new features over time. It also introduces cross-platform online play, allowing PlayStation 4 and PC players to compete against each other for the first time.

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WIRED speaks to series producer Yoshinori Ono about what went into reimagining Street Fighter for a new age, his future plans for the game and how the internet can't replace arcades.

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WIRED: Some of the returning fighters have been given pretty radical makeovers - what went into choosing these new looks?Yoshinori Ono: Street Fighter IV was a return to the roots of Street Fighter II, which meant that the appearance of characters from that era wasn't changed greatly. However, SFV is based on the concept of a total reset, and that applies not only to the mechanics and game design, which bring out the individuality and personality of each character, but the art design as well. Also, since the game takes place between SFIV and Street Fighter III in the series' timeline, the appearance of the characters is a kind of transitional phase between how they looked in each of those games. The game's artists took all of these considerations on board when designing the characters for Street Fighter V.

The changes go beyond the aesthetic -- characters such as Ken now seem to play very differently. Why change some of the more familiar characters?With Street Fighter IV being active for seven or eight years now, the community for the game has expanded and the tournament scene has become a lot bigger, with the Capcom Pro Tour as evidence of that. But on the negative side of this popularity, it's become very hard for new players to get started and get into the game. We've balanced the battle design of SFV so that both veterans and newcomers will be starting off from the same point and can stand on the same pitch, as it were, and play against each other.

This has meant that the battle design of familiar characters has been reconsidered, but not just for the sake of it. As I said before, bringing out the personality and individuality of all the characters has been one of our goals and that's what we've always kept in mind when making changes to fan favourites.

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Looking at the new characters, they all have very different designs and fighting styles. What makes a new character 'fit' into the Street Fighter world?With the battle design being reset, it was actually relatively easy to make the new characters fit, in terms of how they fight. We had eight characters returning from SFIV, and four characters making comebacks from previous games. That left four slots for brand new characters which the designers were able to develop with complete freedom within the balance of the new game, without needing to worry about them having to fit within an existing framework or mindset. The Street Fighter universe is also not tied to notions of groundedness or realism when it comes to characters, so that helps us bring variety to the game through the roster.

You've said in the past that it was tough to get Street Fighter IV made. Did the positive reception to that game help push ahead on Street Fighter V?(Laughs) Yes, you could certainly say that the situation we were in at the start of the Street Fighter V project was very different to that of Street Fighter IV. The growth of the global Street Fighter community, most recently evidenced with the Capcom Cup and Capcom Pro Tour, has seen the fighting games scene develop into a very different beast to the one we saw in the '90s, and that's something that the company has acknowledged during the lifetime of SFIV.

I was able to pitch SFV as a project needed to maintain and build upon this momentum, and that's thanks to the support of the community and also you guys in the media who have flown the flag for us over the years, which is something I'm truly grateful for.

Street Fighter V won't have modified updates -- Super, Ultra, etc -- like past entries have. Do you feel that old approach lead to too many people waiting for the 'best' version?I think not so much that people would hold off on buying the game until the next version came out, so much as people were like, "what, ANOTHER new version?" They'd wonder just how many versions were going to come, and that this would lead to them being demotivated to keep playing the game. With Street Fighter V we will of course be adding characters and contents through updates, but we won't be doing this through standalone retail releases with labels like Super, Turbo or Ultra. You can almost consider the Street Fighter V game disc available at launch as a kind of install disc that you can buy and then continue getting new content updates directly to your console or PC.

Can fans expect to see updates and tweaks to balance or character skills in response to feedback through those updates, or will it mainly be a way of distributing DLC?Yes, we plan to add all those kinds of updates you mention after the game is launched, and we'll be listening to the fans to understand what they want us to add to the game. We've already announced six additional characters coming throughout 2016, so that's something you can look forward to already.

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Balance updates are something that can theoretically be released as often as we want, but I think you have to be careful not to put out too many such updates, as it can lead to confusion among the player base as to what state the game is in exactly at any given moment, in terms of the abilities and stats of each of the characters. Of course, any aspects of the game that are considered "game breaking" will be dealt with as soon as possible, but when you consider that the game is being used as the basis of a lot of esports events, I think we need to carefully consider the timing of balance updates based on the needs of the community, and to make sure fans know in advance when they are happening so they can be prepared.

Capcom

What challenges were there in delivering cross-platform online play for Street Fighter V?There were certainly a number of challenges that we faced on that one, but thanks to the support of Sony, we were able to solve them before anything became too big to deal with. In saying that, I expect that there will be some issues that arise after launch which we didn't see during the beta tests. The effort put into the game before launch is going to help us deal with issues that arise with the game as a service after launch and we have a lot of work ahead of us, but that's part of the territory when you choose to take the road of the “game as an ongoing service” business model.

The arcade scene is all but dead in the west. Do you feel online multiplayer is an adequate replacement for games like Street Fighter?You can't cover the entire arcade experience with just online multiplayer: the analogue experience of standing with someone and feeling the sweat, heat and energy of the arcade atmosphere. We're obviously developing the online experience for the game to be a comprehensive one, but at the same time, we have established the esports side of the game with events like the Capcom Pro Tour and the Capcom Cup as a way to allow players to experience that arcade-like atmosphere in real life. By bringing these experiences to locations around the world I hope that perhaps there could be a re-energisation of the arcade scene as well.